About the same time I started at my current job, Leo started there, too. He didn't work in the same department as me but I saw him regularly nonetheless. About 5'7", 130 lbs, with a thick tuft of jet-black hair, near-perfectly-formed full lips, a slighly - but only just slightly - chiseled face that could have hung as well on a Filipino boy band as it did on the wiry frame it currently occupies and a slightly nervous disposition; his eyes routinely darted around the room like a cats' surveying its prey, his walk fast, not so much hurried as a measured effort not to be noticed, his restless leg nervously tapping the off pewter-colored, industrial carpet of our large, estrogen-laced office.
He was also very nice in that Millenial post-ironic sort of way. Like so many people in their twenties today, he takes himself seriously because to do otherwise would require taking risk of the sort that this generation seems adverse to taking. (Insert winky icon.) But nice has its charms and, besides, I am inescapably sexually attracted to him so his "imperfections," like traffic in the background, escaped me.
And so, I began the dance. I took an interest in him, taking an interest in his thoughts and opinions on his new position, attempting to learn more about his personal life in a general (but enthusiastic) way and what I could gather in very short order is that Leo, for all the beauty that the gods have seen fit to bestow upon, is largely a nice, polite but rather dull individual.
Still, I'm not Randy Jackson and Leo isn't Jessica Sanchez.
But I couldn't help but notice the things we homosexuals always notice in those we suspect (or would like to suspect) are gay: the extended gazes and too-forced laughs, the eagerness to learn more about those aspects of our life that now seem so remote from us as to be invisible. Really? You sampled which flavor of cream cheese at Costco? Oh my! And Leo, lovely, sweet-faced Leo was guilty as charged.
But I went with it because, having done this dance so many times before, I knew the steps in my sleep.
Then one night, opportunity got the best of me. I was working by myself on one of those rare slow Saturday nights and so was he. I decided to look up his name in our data base, not knowing what I'd find, and discovered that they had set up his email account. So, I emailed him. I demanded he give me his cell phone number so we could text because - of all the uncreative reasons in the world - I was "bored." Realizing that one day someone might see that, I quickly emailed a second message. I wasn't bored, I was lonely!
But the damage was already done. Not because someone found out about the emails to a male co-worker that looked suspiciously like the makings of a sexual harrassment case. But because it made me look like an ungrateful employee who had too much time on his hands. Worse, the emails that were supposed to end up in Leo's inbox were actually rerouted to Norman, another nice, Filipino twenty-something, who tended to succumb to tighting fitting tees on his slightly chubby body and has this habit of saying random things without the need to follow-up. ("I like putting cough drops in my hot tea." "I think I'm going to put a new stero in my car." "I bought the new Flat Rascals album.")
What happened next plunged me into a morose state of self-exile for about the next three weeks....
Pictured from top to bottom, Filipino boy bands 17:28, 1:43 and XLR8.
(To be continued)
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